Home Sound Bar 550

Overview

The Denon Home Sound Bar 550 is a compact Denon sound bar with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and HEOS built in. It is 650 mm wide, 75 mm high and 120 mm deep, comes in black and can be wall-mounted.

Denon lists a 4.0 arrangement of six drivers, two 19 mm soft-dome tweeters and four 55 mm full-range drivers, plus three 50 x 90 mm passive radiators, driven by a 4-channel amplifier.

The TV connects over HDMI eARC or optical. The bar also has one 4K HDMI input, a 3.5 mm aux input, a USB port for music files, an Ethernet port, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. With the HEOS app for iOS and Android it streams from services such as Spotify and Tidal, and it supports AirPlay 2 and groups with other HEOS speakers for multi-room audio. Denon lists playback of FLAC, WAV and ALAC files up to 24-bit/192 kHz and DSD at 2.8 and 5.6 MHz. Amazon Alexa is built in, with microphones that can be switched off.

The control panel on top lights up when a hand comes close. The bar also works with the included remote, the TV remote and the HEOS app. The box contains the remote, an HDMI cable, an optical cable, the power cord, wall mount spacers, a wall mount template and the printed guides.

What the specs mean

• 4.0 speaker setup: four main channels and no subwoofer channel. There is no subwoofer in the box and no up-firing drivers.
• Dolby Atmos and DTS:X: Dolby Atmos lets creators place each sound where they want it to go, including overhead. Without height speakers, the bar creates the 3D effect with virtual processing. The bar also decodes Dolby Digital and DTS, and offers Dolby Surround and DTS Virtual:X modes that add virtual height and surround effects to other content.
• HDMI eARC: the enhanced Audio Return Channel carries the TV's sound to the sound bar over one HDMI cable, including high-bitrate formats such as Dolby Atmos. Plain ARC is limited to compressed formats.
• 4K HDR passthrough: a console, streaming box or Blu-ray player can plug into the bar's HDMI input. The video goes on to the TV in 4K with HDR10 or Dolby Vision, while the bar plays the sound.
• Expandability: a DSW-1H wireless subwoofer and two Denon Home 150, 250 or 350 speakers as wireless rear speakers can be added for a 5.1 system.